The Struggle for Iran

When Christopher de Bellaigue first visited Iran in 1999, he found it irresistably alive: under the leadership of President Mohammad Khatami, Islamic revolutionary rule was loosening and the prospects for democratic pluralism seemed bright. But over the remaining six years of Khatami's presidency, de Bellaigue watched as the conservative religious establishment reasserted its power and the hopes of reform slowly died. The country seemed to turn its back on all that Khatami stood for when it elected an unsophisticated Islamist ideologue, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to succeed him in 2005.

As the optimism of the reform movement was fading, international tensions over Iran's nuclear program were rising. George W. Bush included Iran in the "axis of evil," depicting it as a malign theocracy determined to acquire nuclear weapons and threaten Israel. Yet de Bellaigue's accounts of the nuclear negotiations make clear that the West's opposition to Iranian nuclear ambitions has helped both to empower those who oppose democratic reform and perhaps even to convince Iran it needs nuclear weapons for self-defense.

Beyond the high political drama, de Bellaigue, a long-term resident of Tehran and a fluent Persian speaker, gives a sense of the complexities of Iranian culture and society through striking portraits of Iranians going about their daily lives—reading the poetry of Rumi, looking at modern art, making films under the threat of censorship, trying to get by despite domestic turmoil and military threats. His keen analyses of Iran's politics and its people offer fascinating insights into a often misunderstood nation that poses some of the most challenging problems facing the world today.

About the Author

Christopher de Bellaigue was born in London in 1971 and has worked as a journalist in the Middle East and South Asia since 1994. His first book, In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize. He lives in Tehran with his wife and two children.

Praise For The Struggle for Iran…

"Bringing together long essays originally published in journals such as The New York Review of Books and The Guardian, The Struggle for Iran thoughtfully illuminates the politics, history, social life, art and cinema (Iran's biggest export to the world after oil) of one of the world's oldest civilizations..The fascinating diversity of thought and practice of a complex society in flux--a necessary antidote to simplistic axis-of-evil, good-or-bad thinking--is opened up by this sophisticated and elegant book." --LiveMint.com

"A provocative view of a defiant nation and its foes." --Kirkus Reviews

"Watch out for the definitive book on the new Iran, The Struggle for Iran (New York Review of Books), by young British writer Christopher de Bellaigue, one of the best of the new generation of middle east experts writing in English." --Prospect Magazine (UK)

"An eloquent and sensitive memoir of an increasingly bleak political situation, this selection deserves special recognition for its emphasis on young Iranians' efforts to hybridize Islam and Western values and its implicit suggestion that such efforts may be the way of the future." --Booklist

"De Bellaigue's...anecdotes and interviews provide tremendously valuable context for many of today's headlines." --Washington Post Book World